The Confederacy and Slavery.

Published: July 12, 1863

JOHN BRIGHT lately made a speech upon American affairs, speaking again as heretofore in our favor. He drew his argument for hoping that we should succeed, from the cotton trade -- telling his hearers that the trade of Lancashire, "as they all knew, had been for some years resting on a most insecure foundation;" that the supply of cotton from America must always have been insufficient and insecure, because there was a want of labor at the South which could not be remedied under a state of Slavery, and that it was Slavery, therefore, which had made the production of cotton insufficient and insecure; but let the Union be restored and Slavery abolished, and free laborers would flow to the South, and this want would be supplied. He spoke of the question "as one of business, though he was glad that in this case business coincided with high sentiment and high morality."

This being the case, of course the London Times disagreed with Mr. BRIGHT. If his views of business had coincided with pure selfishness and secession, he might have looked for approval from that quarter. But as it is, Mr. BRIGHT is denounced as one who "urges the prosecution of a war which the Government of his country, of France, and even of Russia, desire to see brought to an end."

The inference is, that they desire to see the Slave Confederacy advanced to power, and established among the community of nations. We hear no more of late about the success of the rebellion insuring the abolition of Slavery. There was plenty of such talk at the first, but events have swept it all down into oblivion.

With every month the purpose of the rebels to maintain their hold upon their slaves has become more fixed, more desperate. The same mail which brings us Mr. BRIGHT's speech brings us, published in the European papers, the address of a hundred rebel parsons who held a conference at Richmond, which reiterates the old absurdities on the Slavery question, as if the world did not know their absurdity. These clergymen. declare that Southern Slavery "is not incompatible with our holy Christianity," that the "condition of the slaves is not wretched, as Northern fictions would have men believe, but prosperous and happy;" that "Abolitionism is an interference with the plans of Divine Providence," &c, &c., ad nauseam.

None of these ministers look forward to the abolition of Slavery as a result of the success of the rebellion. What rebel does or ever has? Some of their sympathizers, who sought a way to harmonize present Interest with their previous philanthropic declarations, have imagined such a thing. But the South declares that she has "substituted for the words Liberty, Fraternity and Equality, the words Slavery, Subordination and Government," and every movement indicates that she has clenched her hand in a death-grip upon the black flag of Slavery, and will not let go her hold even though she sink herself beneath the waves of destruction.

This is the war that we are waging. These are the results to which events are tending. Either the slave system, with its barbarous laws and its lawless atrocities, with its denial of the principles which are the hope of humanity and its claim to erect again the idols which Christianity has overturned, is to succeed in forcing its recognition upon the civilized world, or that "golden sun of liberty" shall yet arise over a restored Union and a Government more powerful than ever before, because throughout the land there shall be no slave.